Punishing the Rapists — Editorial

In the last 5 years, there has not been a sin­gle con­vic­tion in rape cas­es in this coun­try – a fact dis­closed by the inte­ri­or min­istry before the Senate’s Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Law and Jus­tice. Since its rev­e­la­tion around the end of last month, this star­tling fact has received very lit­tle atten­tion from the main­stream media.

Rape is per­haps the least report­ed crime in Pak­istan. The record­ed fig­ures are just a thin frac­tion of the actu­al num­ber of inci­dents. Yet, accord­ing to the offi­cial fig­ures, more than 1200 cas­es of rape and gang rape have been reg­is­tered in Pun­jab only in the first five months of this year. While it involves a good deal of risk of stigma­ti­za­tion to stand up and pur­sue such case, the way Pakistani’s police and judi­cial sys­tem treats the vic­tim is noth­ing short of dou­ble jeop­ardy. There is almost no hope for any of these vic­tims to get jus­tice in the pre­vail­ing sit­u­a­tion. On the con­trary, the dys­func­tion­al sys­tem is encour­ag­ing rape cul­ture and aug­ment­ing the spi­ral of silence for the vic­tims of sex­u­al crimes.

Apart from the dire­ly need­ed rad­i­cal reforms in laws, judi­cial sys­tem, law enforce­ment and oth­er insti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nisms, a fun­da­men­tal atti­tude change is also required. Indeed, it is the deeply root­ed misog­y­nist mind­set that is reflect­ed in the insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices. In order to fight back the rape cul­ture, we must get out of the state of denial; rape is ram­pant and is extreme­ly under-report­ed. Any form of blam­ing the vic­tim equals sup­port­ing and encour­ag­ing the per­pe­tra­tors. Women are absolute­ly equal to men and free to make their per­son­al choic­es; noth­ing jus­ti­fies con­trol­ling them.

It has been almost ten months since this nation expressed its last sig­nif­i­cant reac­tion over an inci­dent of rape; when a five year old girl was raped and left uncon­scious out­side a hos­pi­tal in Lahore. Dozens of such unfor­tu­nate inci­dents are being report­ed on a con­tin­u­ous basis. The once out­raged pub­lic, spurred main­ly by the extra­or­di­nary media cov­er­age, have been in a slum­ber since then. In order to affect any change for a peren­ni­al prob­lem like rape, a con­stant out­cry is nec­es­sary.